


Psalm 43:1

by Spylace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Castiel, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Underage Sex, only if you consider someone disguised as a child to be a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:42:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How 6x9 should have ended if the fairies had been unwilling to let go of the firstborn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psalm 43:1

**Author's Note:**

> So what did happen in the four hours Dean was gone?

  
_Vindicate me, my God,_  
and plead my cause  
against an unfaithful nation.  
Rescue me from those who are  
deceitful and wicked.  
\--Psalm 43:1

  
Oberon wears a child’s face, a child’s laughter and none of its innocence. His body remains bare but does not seem to feel the coming winter, the changing leaves and the frosty air. He sits on Dean’s shoulders and eats the iron-cast bullets one by one like they’re goddamned candy and rolls them playfully across his red-stained tongue. He likes to pet him and covets him like a prized toy, ignores his oaths and the half-remembered charms before slapping him across the jaw.  
  
The fairy king feeds him cream and honey and little else. When the sweet nectar overflows and trickles down his mouth, he leans down to lick it away. Dean shudders visibly and curls up on himself, the touch something unholy and obscene. He pulls his lips back in a weak grimace, his insides churning as though he might be sick. Numbly, he feels the whiskerless chin rub against his shoulder and the base of his spine. He trembles, whines and pleads when a soft heat passes between his legs and brings him to unwanted completion.  
  
Dean weeps as the king caresses him with sticky fingers and dots him with jewels. His queen, Titania, favors them with an indulgent look, lions at her feet and doves in the air. She is matronly in appearance but splendid to behold, her body made of beech and her limbs slim willows. She doesn’t seem to mind his stares and brazenly cups her breasts to show him the milky stripe of skin between. Her attendants flit about her with practiced ease, their dragonfly wings casting a shimmering veil down her hair.  
  
They barely start when he begins to scream.  
  
They tattoo his back first, from the shoulders down to the cleft of his ass. They plant cypresses on his hip and ivies at his heels, weave feathers in his hair and crown him with thorns.  
  
“You are beautiful,” they whisper, painting fish on his skin with brittle fingers, the pain barely noticeable against the dull ache in his skull. Dean no longer fights them; his will gone from him like his blood drained every noon. He sees the color bleaching from his skin and building in his eyes. There is no use for a physical body in the realm of fairies but it is a vessel and the fae so delight in celebration.  
  
Eons later when he has barely the strength left within him to wake, a stranger arrives in the grove. The stranger is different, righteous and smells like home. But Dean is so weak now, he barely notices and understands the words uttered. They thrum like a lone heartbeat and chase away the clouds in his mind.  
  
“You had no right.”  
  
“He entered our city, our land, our realm. He, the first born, was promised to us.”  
  
“He was not yours to take!”  
  
The fairies scatter, shrieking in glee. Dully, Dean raises his head, his eyes a startling swirl of brassy green and silver. Oberon strokes his hair fondly and stares at the interloper with unseelie eyes. With the stroke of midnight he has grown and stretches, tall as though he might like to touch the marble skies. He sits on his throne of stone, his knees spread and Dean pulled in between. “He was a prize worth taking.” The king purrs, “Tell me angel. How long did it take for you to notice that he was gone?” and his smile turn malicious. “How long until you _beat_ the information out of his brother?”  
  
“I challenge your claim.”  
  
Oberon sits back, clearly amused. “Ahh... very interesting.”  
  
Titania comes to stand at her king’s side, her bejeweled fingers resting behind the shell of his ear. A tiny fairy above her eyebrow gives the angel a rude gesture and Dean remembers— _Castiel_.  
  
“Three nights.” Oberon says at last, “three tasks. If you complete them all, I will let this one go free.”  
  
Castiel looks suspicious. He has the right to be. A guttural sound erupts from Dean’s mouth before subsiding. He is so very tired right now.  
  
“You swear it?”  
  
The fairy king waves impatiently, “yes, yes.”  
  
The very woods seem to moan at this decision. Motes of light appear freely in the air, showering down on their heads in a golden cascade. One alights Dean’s lashes and he flutters his eyes, momentarily blinded. His vision returns and he sees the collection of the fairy court. Shuddering, Dean turns his gaze back to Oberon’s lap and breathes into the now-familiar scent of musk and something terribly sweet. “I want my goblet, the one your brother stole long be...”  
  
“Done” Castiel says flatly, dropping the obsidian goblet at his feet. Oberon gives him a displeased look and places a hand across the nape of Dean’s neck. He flushes, pushing in to the touch. It is Titania who gives the angel an answer as she leans over her king and shields him from view.  
  
“Very well, you may claim your prize for the coming morn. When the sun sets, you will receive an even more difficult task.”  
  
The fairies whisper overhead as the angel gives a curt nod. Prompted, Dean goes to him at a sedate pace, naked and pliant to his every demand. There is a collar around his neck, one made of bleached bones and runes. The carvings burn and he wails when Castiel tries to remove them.  
  
“Dean, no.” Castiel says when the clumsy fingers fumble at his fly and grope his groin. Dean keens in frustration, shoulders tense and awaiting the blow that will surely fall. His back ripples with ink and a fish jumps over his jutting ribs as though chasing the branches that are led to sway. The unseelie court disappears with a triumphant laughter and mockery aimed at the duo.  
  
“Shh...” the angel soothes with a touch of his palm. Dean’s eyes are wide, wild with liquid gold and emeralds. He shivers at the there-and-gone impression of the fae still lingering at the edge of their vision. He shakes because even hours after the fairies have melted into the woods, he can hear their echoed voices.  
  
Castiel holds him and grips him tight. He lets him cry against his shoulders as he rocks him through the dew-lit dawn.  
  
The next day, Oberon asks for an apple from the garden. Castiel hesitates; his wings spread and ready to fling him into the air. The fairy king smiles nastily, tugging on Dean’s hair until he goes and submits obediently. A lioness growls and licks his cheek like she might a young cub that had learned and learned something well. “The clock’s a tickin’ angel, tick tock tick tock.”  
  
Castiel is gone. Dean cannot put a name to the indescribable pang in his chest.  
  
The angel returns hours later, just as the sky turns violet-grey. The fairies announce his arrival with tiny trumpets and jeers that shake the entire wood. Castiel does not bat an eye as tiny fingers poke at his ruffled feathers and wings. The sacred fruit lands neatly in Oberon’s lap and the fairy deigns to take a bite, smearing the sharp juices against Dean’s dry lips. Dean gags, the taste indescribably bitter. Immediately, Castiel kneels before him and takes his mouth into his own.  
  
Dean kisses like he breathes, a complete necessity to his survival. His hands, uncertain as to where they should go, dig into the ground and carve up the fertile earth.  
  
Oberon claps his hands at the display and puts the apples on top of a silver tray.  
  
“Well done.”  
  
“The apple is fatal to him.” Castiel says, low and angry.  
  
“Perhaps,” the fairy king acknowledges with a small tilt of his head. “It would not matter if he were to stay.”  
  
But the angel is no longer paying attention. “Dean”  
  
Dean buries his face in his lapels and simply breathes.  
  
“Get me out of here.”  
  
The fairies hide with a crack like gunshot, the seelie oddly susceptible to manners of heavenly persuasion.  
  
“I’m working on it. I cannot take you back through the way I came, the collar prevents it.”  
  
“Then get it off of me.”  
  
“I tried. You were in... pain.”  
  
Castiel’s wings settle over him like a heavy weight and Dean clings to them desperately as though they remind him of something he previously forgot. The angel waits patiently, brooding over him like a parent bird as he tries to reverse the damages incurred. Dean flinches when he touches the stripes of ink, ancient in origin and irreversible to lesser creatures in the eyes of the fae. “Sleep” Castiel commands with fingers at his temple and Dean complies, head pillowed against the angel’s thigh.  
  
On the third evening Castiel stands before the seelie court, their forms shifting and crawling as they make their transformation into unseelie. Oberon sneers in ill-disguised jealousy when Dean refuses to heel and return to his side. The tension in the air is palpable and every hair on his back stands on end as though he stuck his fingers into a live socket.  
  
Then Castiel says—“No”  
  
The fairy king hums suddenly, pleased with himself.  
  
“You swore to complete three tasks.”  
  
“Not this.”  
  
Oberon pouts.  
  
“Then you can’t have him.”  
  
The fairies shove Dean from the back and send him into a sprawl at Oberon’s feet. Castiel starts when Oberon stands and kicks him in the side. There is a dull crack as one of his ribs break. He wraps an arm around his chest and struggles to get away. “He is my hound.” The fairy claims, his face contorting into a grotesque mask. “He is my dog.”  
  
“He is Dean.” Castiel says, his voice promising thunder and everything else. “And that is all he has to be.”  
  
He lurches to his feet as the collar shatters, leaving a string of ivory around his neck useless to hold anything. Oberon howls his fury and wraps his strong fingers around his throat, threatening to tear his essence from his body. Castiel throws salt in the king’s eyes and slides the holy blade into his heart. Titania shrieks, her cries the roar of an avalanche. Oberon falls in her arms, his people rising in vengeance for the blood spilt.  
  
Doves take flight as Castiel pulls him close. The angel makes him no promises but does not ask for his word. Dean closes his eyes. When he awakes, it is to static as the neon sign outside the window flickers and dies with the wind.  
  
The angel is warm and solid as they land on the scratchy motel bed, loosely held in each other’s embrace. Castiel touches his face hesitantly, almost reverently, mapping the slope his forehead and the bruises across his pale cheeks. When he reaches his mouth, Dean bites his fingers, not hard but firmly, and gives them a slow drag of his tongue letting him know of his intentions despite all that has happened. The angel presses a thumb against the corner of his lip and holds it there, his laugh surprising but reassuring to hear.  
  
They lay there watching the darkness recede and the sun rise across the smog-riddled skies, lurid lights eclipsing the memories of the primordial dawn.


End file.
